


Be Like Water

by Neffectual



Series: 104 Reasons to Stay Alive [31]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Established Relationship, F/M, Female Hange Zoë, Het, Love, M/M, Romance, orisor inspired
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 17:13:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3858481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neffectual/pseuds/Neffectual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hanji likes, when she gets the chance, to take a bath, a real, deep bath in one of the pools that could seat three, with the water steaming around her and rose-scented oil softening her skin. And Mike is always finding ways to spoil her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Like Water

**Author's Note:**

> For Mina, as always. Because you deserve so much more than what is given.
> 
> Title from the song of the same name by Sarah Fimm.

It has been fifty-eight days since her last bath. That is not a stab at her cleanliness, although everyone knows Hanji could do with remember where the showers are a little more often, but it is rare that she would go more than a week without at least a quick wash of the places not covered by clothes. Risk of infection is too great otherwise, considering what she works with. 

Nevertheless, as much as the showers in most places they stay are warm enough, and good for sluicing away blood, there is something mechanical about them, something that speaks of necessity. Hanji likes, when she gets the chance, to take a bath, a real, deep bath in one of the pools that could seat three, with the water steaming around her and rose-scented oil softening her skin.

However, it is rare that they end up somewhere that has proper bathing pools, even for officers; far more likely is the old tin bath hung on the nail in the stables, which gives a small pool of over-heated water that goes cold too quickly. That and it always leaves her smelling a bit like horse – which is not unpleasant, but does rather negate the purpose of having a wash in the first place. 

The chance to sink neck-deep into hot water is rarely found, and so she makes do with washing the bits that show, and a shower when she absolutely has to, on pain of Levi’s scrunched up nose and being prodded with a broom. She is not unclean, she defends, but she sees nothing wrong with preferring to bathe than to wash.  
So, it has been fifty-eight days since her last bath, and finally they’re going to overnight at one of the old military police bases, before they withdrew inside Wall Sina. Hanji has been through here before, once or twice, and she knows the bathing pool was still working last time she was here, piping water up from the hot springs and warming it further in a boiler system older than Erwin, for a truly hot soak. 

She can already feel the ache sluicing out of her muscles as she urges her horse on faster, shifting to the head of the group and whooping. No one bats an eyelid, all too used to Hanji being Hanji, but she can see Mike’s squad moving faster too, and grins wider. It never hurts to know just how eager her lover is to get her naked.

 

As it happens, Levi stops her at the stable door, Mike vanishing inside ahead of her, and she sighs, steadying herself for yet another lecture about how he can’t stand downwind of her.

“Next place with a bath,” Levi starts, and she rolls her eyes, “We get it first.”

This startles a laugh out of her, as she spots Erwin standing a few feet away, trying and failing to look like he isn’t listening intently to the conversation.

“His back finally giving up on him, is it?” she sniggers, because any chance to make a dig at Erwin’s age can never be missed, “I told you that you couldn’t just ride him and put him away wet.”

Far from the possible blush she expects, Erwin’s face splits into a leer as Levi bites his lip against saying something in return that, clearly, he would regret.

“Actually, we’re hoping it can help Levi… relax.” Erwin says, voice low, despite the recruits having cleared out, but the meaning is still obvious, and Hanji’s laugh is a peal of surprised glee, Levi turning with a furious face to kick Erwin in the ankle.

“Shut up.” The smaller man snarls, ears red and mouth a thin line, but Hanji and Erwin exchange a look over his head, which only serves to infuriate him more. He kicks a little higher this time, at the back of Erwin’s knee, in a clear warning.

“Next time.” Hanji says, still smiling, and Levi stops gritting his teeth, “In eight days we’re meant to be at the old inn, nearer to Sina, there’s a bath there. You can have it first.”  
Levi’s head is buried between her breasts as he hugs her, unusually demonstrative, and she pets his silky hair gently, like she would a horse.

“It’s appreciated.” Erwin adds, pulling Levi back by the shoulder and keeping his hand there, the closest she’s seen them in public. Levi leans into the contact like he’s hungry for the touch, and Hanji feels a flicker of sympathy. She is allowed her liberty, her freedom of expression, for all that she must also keep her relationship secret, but for Erwin and Levi, so much of who they are is in the other, it must be painful to keep that under wraps. 

“You’ve got the room next to the kids.” Levi says, and all her sympathy drains out at once, when she looks down at his smug little face, “Hope you can keep the noise down.”

“I’m going to tell everyone you can’t manage Erwin’s enormous dick,” she says, flatly, before turning to leave, “But I’m going to phrase it in such a way that it also suggests he can’t keep it up.”

The sputtering sets her grin back into place as she heads through the open door, eager to get to her lover and – more importantly – her bath. Jaeger’s hanging around the entrance, looking red and flustered.

“Whatever you heard,” she says, and grins, “the most important part is that no one, unless a titan is eating your legs, is to bother command tonight.”

“U-understood.” The kid stutters, and flees. Hanji shakes her head. It’s hard to believe they were ever that young and green. Well, she and Levi were. Erwin had most of his raw edges knocked off by the time they’d turned up, but she’s been assured that he had them.

 

When Hanji steps into the bathroom, there’s already steam rising, and she can smell her rose oils, so she knows Mike has been in the rarely-used bath kit. The tension drops out of her shoulders as she starts the tedious practice of getting her gear off, one bit at a time. The ridiculous contraption is designed to go on easily, in one go, if you’re careful about putting it back together after you take it off, but it comes off in small pieces, the better to be used as tourniquets in emergency situations.

She’s barely started on the first stiff buckle when Mike’s there, naked and golden, kneeling at her feet to tug the fastening free of her hands and work on it himself. Hanji gently lets a hand settle in her lover’s hair, petting him carefully as he bends his head to his task.

It is this, every time, which makes her come back alive, which makes her break from her work, which makes her take a moment and just breathe. Just him, just this man kneeling before her, hands a clear and clever worship as they untie her from constraints and straps just as he unties her from all her worries and fears. He takes his time to unfasten her boots one at a time, slipping them off her feet along with socks that, honestly, she’s amazed he can stand being so near. 

Once she’s barefoot on the cool tiles of the bathing room, Mike goes back to her buckles and straps, rubbing strong fingers where he knows she bruises the most; the crease of her hips, the outer edge of her knee, the point where buttocks meet thigh. The third is likely more for him than her, but each careful press makes the tension drain out of her. She is here, they survived, and there’s a hot bath waiting for her, drawn by a man who loves her enough to undress her after two weeks of hard riding and little enough time to wash. 

 

Their love is not, perhaps, what she dreamed of as a child, if she dreamed of love at all, too often interrupted by titans, commanding officers, recruits who string each other up from the ceiling fixtures and then panic when they can’t get their friends down, but it is, she thinks, just right for the two of them. It’s rushed, mostly silent and frantic, often, but when they get the chance, Mike likes to spoil her, to remind her that she is worth more than a quick tumble in the stables, or stolen kisses before they both go off to what could be their deaths.

He understands her frenetic work pace, the way her duties will always come first, and that sometimes this means she shouts, or loses her temper, that sometimes she won’t always be the easiest person to be around. Sometimes she’s up to her elbows in titan blood when she promised she’d remember to eat dinner, sometimes she’s furnishing Erwin and Levi with new information which might keep more of them alive when she should be in bed – either way, she knows that he’ll keep a plate warm for her, keep their bed warm, always roll over to cradle her, no matter what time she gets to bed, even if he’s sleeping. They seek each other out like titans seek flesh, like moths to flames, like they’re the last pair of lovers on the planet and their love the only way to sustain it. 

She helps him now, as he finishes with the leather and puts it aside, by removing her own shirt. She doesn’t routinely wear anything under her trousers – most of the women don’t – but her concession to riding great distances does mean she’s wearing a breastband today, and he kisses the skin under it as he unwraps her, layer after layer, before she stands naked before him. 

Not for the first time, she curses the damn rations which keep her monthlies from her, the situation which keeps her from taking this glorious mountain of a man and having him father her children, to raise a family with him alongside her. He looks at her like she hung the moon and painted the stars, like she’s something precious and wondrous, and she loves him so much that it hurts her heart. 

Their embrace is gentle, easy, the embrace of lovers long used to having each other near; no desperate clinging, just soft touch, reminding each other of their presence. Hanji revels in the way Mike feels against her, how he is broad planes of muscles against the softness of her breasts, the way his hands cup her hips easily. She’s always been tall, always been built more for combat and childbirth than daintiness and dancing, but Mike makes her feel small, soft and content, cared for. 

 

He leads her by the hand to the bathing pool, as big as she remembers and filled to the brim with water. There are three narrow steps down into the sunken pool, and he’d carry her if she wouldn’t shriek and interrupt their silent devotion to each other. There’s little need for words now, when they have been together for so long and know each other so well, but it doesn’t stop Mike, once he’s settled her into the water, his body strong and smooth behind her.

“I always think I’ve fooled myself that you’re more beautiful than you are,” he says, breaking the silence in the room, “And then I realise that I can’t even keep you in my mind, you’re so much better than – “

The dripping of the water against tiles is once more the only sound, and Hanji wants to come back with something equally loving, but as always, her heart is stuck in her throat, as if to speak one word would be one word too many. She turns and kisses him instead, slow and gentle, his lips soft against her chapped and bitten pair. For all their softness, when she leans back against him, she can feel him hot and hard against her back, but they are no longer teenagers, and they have as much time as they need.

“You are – “ she begins, but the words are gone again – is he everything, her world, her heart, the reason she wakes, the reason she sleeps so deeply? He is all of those and so much more, but he is also just a man, and she is a scientist more often than she is a fool in love, and so those proclamations do not come easily.

“My Hanji.” Mike answers, his voice so fond that she can feel her eyes closing against tears, overwhelmed with love. She turns in his arms and surges upwards, kissing him with all the words she can’t find, all the love she swallows back from speech. They may have the rest of the night, but Hanji has never been one to believe in delayed gratification – and she certainly doesn’t believe in making Mike wait, when he is already so good about the limited time they have together.

“Yours.” She says, so softly that the sound of the water nearly drowns it out. His arms squeeze her tighter, just for a second, and she knows he hears her. He always does.


End file.
